Women

Three un-related news stories regarding "women" that I collected over the last few weeks are summarized below --

• "High school sports helps girls stick with college" -- Sadly yet another university study (tax dollars involved??), this one from Brigham Young University, that simply confirms what garage logicians (see the Garage Logic Show on KSTP AM 1500 for background -- like me have known most of our lives. In my high school participation in sports and excellent academic performance went hand in hand for most of the athletes. Since sports teach out children discipline, responsibility, time management, and team work you develop the skills needed for college.
• Cindy Sheehan -- the mother made famous via the anti-Iraq War protest she led outside the "western White House" at President George Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch has declared she is a candidate for the US House of Representatives seat currently held by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. Given the peace activist community in San Francisco and Speaker Pelosi's failure to bring the troops home after her nearly one year in office this Sheehan-Pelosi primary election is clearly one to watch. In fact opponents of Speaker Pelosi - like me - might be highly motivated to write a campaign check to Ms. Sheehan!!! November 2008 could be very interesting.
• Hillary Care -- while reading the June 2007 issue of State Legislatures magazine I noticed their State by State Report Card for 2004 entitled, "Making the Grade on Women's Health". While my adopted state of Minnesota received the #1 ranking I was shocked to see Arkansas ranked at #49 out of 51!!! Arkansas - home of Bill and Hillary Clinton when he was governor until 1993 when he become president so I doubt their "health care paradise" could have been destroyed in only 11 years by future governors. This is the same Hillary who chaired the task force that tried to have the federal government take over the entire US health care industry.

Bottom line for me -- I am looking forward to our daughter being in school sports but fear Hillary Clinton being elected President in 2008.

Todd

Empowering Women

Clearly the struggle to fully empower women to have equal rights and status with men has a long way to go yet based on the news items I read during my travels last week:

"The Debt Collector vs. the The Widow" -- Viola Sue Kell in Alabama is a 64 year old widow in Alabama who is having her Social Security payments garnished by debt collectors. She was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, "I'm not very good with things when it comes to law. My husband took care of all that."


"Japan's Uncomfortable Truth" -- a Japanese court ruled that "yes women in countries occupied by Japan during World War II such as China, Korea, and others were forced to become 'comfort women' , better known as sex slaves, for Japanese soldiers" (my paraphrasing here). But the court denied all financial claims for compensation brought by two former comfort women.

"He Raped Daughter, Killed Babies" -- a 45 year old illegal immigrant (he not only harmed women here but all immigrants via his evil -- my comments here) from El Salvador in West New York was sentenced to 35 years in prison for raping his teenage daughter and killing the two children she gave birth to as a result of his raping.

How did we reach such a point as a society where we treat our wives, mothers, and daughters so poorly? In the USA women had to fight for the right to vote since it was not guaranteed by our Founding FATHERS -- one of their few mistakes along with allowing slavery to continue to exist on our shores -- and the feminist movement sought to extend their empowerment even further.

We have much work to do across the world to improve gender relations. As a Lutheran I will keep the spirit of the Reformation alive by encouraging the Catholic Church to allow women to become priests. Given their sexual abuse lawsuits the Catholic Church could really use such a positive development that shows a mutual respect of both genders. After all, the Virgin Mary was a woman :-)

Reminder -- Mother's Day is May 13th in the USA -- so thank your mother for giving birth to you.

Todd